​It’s sometimes quite hard to hear who is speaking. Usually the person leading the meeting is audible because they’ll using be a mic, but if others want to talk, they should come up next to the presenter and speak – this is important so people who are attending the meeting remotely can hear what is happening.

It’s worse when there are multiple conversations going on – let one person speak at a time, and make sure they’re close to the mic. No side conversations!​

After a meeting, you should summarise the main issues and decisions of the meeting. The level of detail in the communication should suit the type of meeting, but should at least include a bullet point list of agenda items or any announcements made at the meeting. This can also serve as a reference for those who did attend the meeting.​

​​Ever had a remote meeting via Skype or Skype for Business and had numerous issues with people accessing the meeting, or you couldn't find the shared files, or links afterwards? The de facto approach of communicating via group emails and sharing files via a patchwork of different services is difficult, with the potential for missed messages and files. SSW thinks Microsoft Teams is designed to solve those problems.

​At SSW, we use Microsoft Teams for our company meetings and for our internal communication. Microsoft Teams is designed to provide an easier way for small groups of people to communicate and collaborate.

Microsoft Teams winning feature is its tight integration with Office services and Groups, which allows users to seamlessly and securely switch between editing documents, shared dashboards and planners, and group chat, video and voice calls. The simplicity of just setting up a Team and having access to all these shared services — without the need to spend hours configuring them is part of what Microsoft sees as Teams' selling point. Teams integration with email also allows messages sent to a designated Team address to be copied to a conversation in Teams.

What’s the difference between Skype, Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams?

Skype – an instant messaging app that provides online text message and video chat services. Users may transmit both text and video messages and may exchange digital documents such as images, text, and video.

Skype for Business – a solid communication product boasting multiple modalities and the ability to easily switch between them, as well as share a variety of content forms (e.g., desktop, application, whiteboard, poll).

Microsoft Teams – MS Teams came along and boasted some of the features that Skype for Business offered – predominantly persistent chat, instant messaging, individual and group voice/video calls, and scheduled meetings.

Figure: A chart showing a feature comparison for Skype, Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams.

Bad example: Numerous group chats with no group name and therefore no way of tracking previous chats/files

​​​Good example: Figure showing all of the team members. This group chat can be used over and over for projects discussions with all data in one place and integrated with SharePoint.

Help and improve these rules

Nothing great is easy. The SSW rules are a great resource for developers all around the world.
However it’s hard to keep rules current and correct. If you spot a rule that is out of date, please email or if you are cool tweet me.